Kevin Feige has been discussing the departure of Edgar Wright from the Ant-Man director’s chair, and what made him think Peyton Reed would be a suitable successor.

“Peyton is someone that I’ve been a fan of for a long time,” says Feige. “He was attached to Fantastic Four more than 10 years ago. He had awesome ideas and an awesome vision for the movie, and for various reasons he ended up leaving that movie.”

“He’s come in to meet on a lot of our movies over the years, in particular Guardians,” he continues. “We met with a handful of people [for Ant-Man], but Peyton was always one that I thought would be great.”

He looked at everything, he talked with us, and he said ‘Number one, I agree with the direction you’re going in. And number two, I can add to it.’ And he has – the movie is in as good a shape as it’s ever been right now.”

Not that Marvel has thrown the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to building on the work already completed by Edgar Wright…

“It’s still very much in the spirit of what Edgar’s original pitch was and the entire template of the movie is what Edgar set out and originally came and pitched us maybe eight years ago now,” says Feige. “But it’s on its way to being the absolute best version of what that movie could have been.”

Co-starring Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas and Evangeline Lilly, Ant-Man will open in the UK on 17 July 2015.